Here is a drawing that ought to be circulated broadcast throughout
Australia and New Zealand, that ought to hold a place of honour on the
walls of their public chambers; should hang in gilded frames in the
houses of the rich; be pinned to the rough walls of frame-house and bark
humpy in every corner of "The Outback." It should thrill the heart of
every man, woman, and child Down Under with pride and thankfulness and
satisfaction, should even bring soothing balm to the wounds of those who
in the loss of their nearest and dearest have paid the highest and the
deepest price for the flaming glory of the Anzacs in Gallipoli.
Here in the artist's pencil is a monument to those heroes greater than
pinnacles of marble, of beaten brass and carven stone; a monument that
has travelled over the world, has spoken to posterity more clearly, more
convincingly, and more rememberingly than ever written or word-of-mouth
speech could do. It is to the everlasting honour of the people of the
Anzacs that they refrained from echoing the idle tales which ran
whispering in England that the Dardanelles campaign was a cruel blunder,
that the blood of the Anzacs' bravest and best had been uselessly spilt,
that their splendid young lives had been an empty sacrifice to the
demons of Incompetence and Inefficiency. To those in Australia who in
their hearts may feel that shreds of truth were woven in the
rumours--that the Anzacs were spent on a forlorn hope, were wasted on a
task foredoomed to failure--let this simple drawing bring the comfort of
the truth.
The artist has seen deeper and further than most. The Turkish armies
held from pouring on Russia and Serbia, from thumping down the scales of
neutrality in Greece and Roumania perhaps, from massing their troops
with the Central Powers; the Kaiser chained on the East and West for the
critical months when men and munitions were desperately lacking to the
Allies, when the extra weight of the Turks might have freed the Kaiser's
power of fierce attack on East and West this is what we already know,
what the artist here tells the wide world of the part played by the
heroes of the Dardanelles. In face of this, who dare hint they suffered
and died in vain?